How Mobile Apps Have Surpassed Everything Else in the Digital Space

Almost 9 out of every 10 minutes that a user spends on a mobile device are spent on apps. Since mobile users outnumbered computer users back in 2014, and mobile devices are now the primary medium through which users access internet, music, messenger and everything else online, this data gives a clear picture of how deeply mobiles apps have seeded into the modern lifestyle and have come to dominate the entire digital space.

The general counter-argument that is put forward is- “essentially everything in a mobile device including dialers, camera, SMS, come in the form of apps, which accounts for such highly skewed data”. But an earlier report suggests that the native apps account for a mere 4% of the time spent on apps while the rest 96% is shared by apps preferred by individual users.

Facebook alone accounts for 19% of the time spent by the users on all apps.

Entertainment and gaming are the two most popular categories with 17% and 15% time-share, respectively.

Instant messaging takes the fourth spot with 12% time-share.

Browsers- which include surfing the entire web, consume just 10% of the users’ time spent on mobile devices.

Now if you closely study the data above, it reveals something very interesting. Barring a few exceptions, most of the services including Facebook can be easily accessed through browsers, but the users instead choose to spend their time on individual apps. This gives a clear indication of how beneficial it is to earn that space on users’ home screen.

But what if users have to search something? They must head to the web, right? Well, that seems only partially true. To the utter surprise of many, apps have also started to alter the search & browse habits of consumers with almost a quarter of them starting their search on some mobile app. For instance, if someone wants to search trendy shoes, they no longer ‘Google it’, but ‘Amazon it,’ which seems more convenient to them, primarily due to the Amazon app being at their fingertips.

Now let’s take a step back to analyze what’s really the cause of this major shift in consumer behavior. The internet, from its infancy, has been open in nature with everyone on a level field, and consumers free to choose. But the rise of smartphones also brought a parallel internet in the form of app stores. The companies, that had an early start, ceased this opportunity to earn their own exclusive space on the users’ phone and hence made it much tougher for new services to break their monopoly.

Think for yourself- when was the last time you used something other than YouTube to watch videos or other than Amazon for shopping. The answer you give, in turn, tells a lot about how you perceive the web and how mobile applications have changed your ways of accessing the internet.

What the future holds

While none of use says that the internet is going to die tomorrow; on the contrary, it will continue to prosper. But when it comes to groundbreaking innovations and user engagement, it is the app industry that will lead the market. Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to for an individual brand identity or an established business that needs to guard its dominance, missing out on this app revolution is a thing no industry can afford to do now.